In-house counsel salary in Zurich 2026: how many seats CHF 1 million funds.

Article 734 of the Code of Obligations requires a remuneration report. Article 734a, in the English compilation on Fedlex for 2026, requires the amounts paid directly or indirectly to the board of directors, the executive board, and any advisory board. The board total is broken out for each member, by name and function. The executive committee is one aggregate, plus the amount paid to the single highest-paid member, by name and function. Everyone else on that committee is inside the aggregate. SIX Exchange Regulation’s Directive on Information relating to Corporate Governance, annex point 5.3, tells issuers that are outside Articles 620 to 762 to disclose a remuneration report analogous to Articles 734a to 734d and compensation figures analogous to Articles 734a to 734c. The accompanying guideline is dated 2 December 2025. A foreign issuer on SIX is not a way around the individual-line gap.

The UBS Group annual report for 2025 is the illustration. The highest total is the Group CEO: CHF 14,921,193. Fixed compensation inside that total is CHF 2,821,193, and the base salary inside the fixed figure is CHF 2,500,000. Variable compensation is CHF 12,100,000. Fixed plus variable equals the total. Adding the base again would double-count it. At 1 USD = 0.8332 CHF the CEO total is $17,908,300. One million francs funds 0.07 of that package. The same report prints the aggregate for all Group Executive Board members at CHF 145,342,383, about $174,438,800. At 31 December 2025 the Group Executive Board had 15 members, and a Group General Counsel was one of them. The report does not print that seat’s cash. Share holdings in the report are not a salary.

Zurich Insurance Group’s annual report for 2025 prints the chief executive at CHF 10.39 million (about $12,470,000), up from CHF 9.88 million. Fixed compensation in that total is CHF 2.32 million. Short-term incentives are CHF 3.80 million. Long-term incentives are CHF 4.27 million. Those three pieces are the CHF 10.39 million. The executive committee in aggregate is CHF 57.67 million (about $69,215,100), up from CHF 55.41 million. One million francs funds 0.10 of the chief-executive package. The report prices the chief executive and the committee. It does not price a general counsel who is not the highest-paid executive.

A general counsel who is not the highest-paid executive is not in the table. The cantonal Lohnklassen, which label a 13th month inside the base, are a public-sector scale of a different employer. They are set out on the Zurich legal-market page. The cantonal reading for a general-counsel title is on the general counsel salary Zurich 2026 page. National titled averages, and Article 167a of the Civil Procedure Code in force on 1 January 2025, are on the Switzerland in-house salary page. The cantonal franc ranges, the national titled averages, and Article 167a stay on those pages.

Sartori & Partners has worked Zurich in-house searches for 5 years and closed 12 of them over three years. Completion on those 12 closed searches is 93 percent. The typical range is 4 to 7 months. The median from offer to acceptance is 15 working days. Counter-offer incidence is 31 percent. Of those 12, 5 were head-of-legal seats. The interview readings come from the same 250 structured interviews with Zurich counsel. Segments inside that set are not a second cohort.

Inside that interview set, 61 of 90 bank and insurer counsel, over 24 months, named the 13th salary as the line a foreign offer either drops or counts twice. Inside the same set, 28 of 40 heads of legal, in the twelve months to September 2026, would not move for a base inside the Funktionsstufe 13 year-25 maximum of CHF 193,893. A general counsel at a SIX-listed insurer in Zurich put the month-count in one sentence: “The Jahreslohn is already thirteen payments. The first draft treated it as twelve and added another.” A head of human resources at a Zurich private bank described the failed first offer: “We matched the year-25 maximum of Funktionsstufe 13 and still lost the first name to a bonus the city scale does not print.”

Two files, described by role only. A SIX-listed insurer in Zurich hired a sanctions counsel in 22 weeks, inside the 4 to 7 month range. The letter stated the base as thirteen payments and separated the bonus before the shortlist went out. A privately held industrial group in Zurich priced a commercial counsel at the Funktionsstufe 12 year-25 maximum of CHF 177,043, treated that figure as twelve months, and then added a thirteenth. The counter-offer was a bonus. The letter was rewritten. The file still closed in month 7. Both files are among the 12 closed searches.

The firm has made 400+ placements since 2017 (230+ in-house). The Zurich line’s 12 closed searches over three years sit inside that record. The firm maps 1,480,000+ lawyers. What that map does not supply is a listed Zurich general counsel’s cash. Article 734a is why.

Searches are retained only. The fee is 25 to 30 percent of first-year total compensation, and the retainer is 30 percent of that fee. A general-counsel, chief legal officer, or chief compliance officer placement carries a 12-month guarantee. Other in-house placements carry six months. Those terms are firm-wide. They are not a Zurich wage. The company that wants the hire inside the 4 to 7 month range writes four lines before the first approach: the base, whether that base is twelve months or thirteen, the bonus, and the pension.

If you are the company putting this lawyer on a Zurich payroll, the next conversation is a search brief. The in-house and general counsel recruiting desk runs that brief. A first general counsel sits on first general counsel. Replacement of a sitting general counsel sits on GC succession. The research method is on the methodology page. To open the conversation, use contact or talk.